1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a combustion head assembly for use with a boiler for generating heat for homes and businesses. In particular, the invention relates to a combustion head assembly comprising multiple combustion heads that can be easily removed and replaced.
2. The Prior Art
A traditional home heating or hot water unit consists of a burner connected to a boiler. The burner consists of a fan, a fuel source and a large combustion head having a fuel nozzle and ignition tips for igniting the fuel spray, all permanently connected in a single unit. This burner is permanently mounted through a large hole in a mounting plate on the boiler.
Based upon the desired temperature and the amount of heat desired to be generated, the burner fires according to a controller on the unit. The heat generated is based on the amount of time the burner is firing and the fuel is pumped into the boiler. The amount of fuel pumped into the boiler during firing is always a constant.
This standard method of generating heat in the boiler is extremely inefficient, since the same amount of fuel is fed into the boiler every time the controller fires the burner. There is no way to control the amount of fuel fired into the boiler so that an excess amount is not used. If a large amount of heat is required, a very large burner must be used. This can become very cumbersome and expensive.
Furthermore, the single unit construction of the burner makes it extremely inefficient and expensive to repair any broken components of the combustion head assembly. If any component of the assembly breaks, the entire boiler must be shut down and the assembly disassembled for repair. For this reason, many large institutional areas such as schools and office buildings have more than one boiler for use as a backup in the event of malfunctioning.
An easily removable burner has been proposed in U.S. Pat. No. 2,119,952 to Engels. Engels discloses an oil combustion head that is easily removable from its outer shell for repair and inspection. However, the shell is permanently mounted to the boiler. Furthermore, this burner also suffers from the drawback that the amount of heat, or BTU's generated during firing of the combustion head cannot be controlled.